Hims Launches Hers, A Direct-To-Consumer Site Selling Birth Control And Other Drugs

Men’s e-commerce and telehealth company Hims is launching a new vertical for women.Photo courtesy of Hers

One year ago Andrew Dudum launched Hims to sell generic hair loss and erectile dysfunction drugs to men online via telemedicine. Dudum, 30, said that in the first week Hims had $1 million in sales—“and that was the slowest week we’ve ever done.”

Might as well go after the other 50% of the population, right? After $97 million in venture capital funding from investors like Thrive Capital and Founders Fund, the company is launching a new telehealth brand targeted at women: “Hers” will sell prescription skin creams, birth control pills, and Addyi, a controversial libido-boosting medicine.

Hilary Coles, brand lead on the Hers launch, says the challenge is different. “Men have been told for years that it’s weird to want to take care of yourself. As women, as we looked around the table, and we felt like we've been inundated,” says Coles, explaining that with Hers they want to sell products that are “reliable and scientifically proven to work.”

The Hers online platform will work the same way the Hims one does. Customers can order products to show up on their doorstep monthly. Potential patients who want to get prescription medications, like finasteride pills for hair regrowth or birth control pills, fill out questions about their medical history specific to the condition that they want to be evaluated for, and then, if doctors choose, they’ll have a back-and-forth discussion with a patient over a secure messaging system. (For ED pills and Addyi screening, doctors are required to chat with the patient before making a diagnosis.) Once patients get their prescriptions, they also get automated follow-up check-ins from Hims or Hers telling patients to share how things are going with the medication or treatment.

Starting Thursday, Hers will have a range of new prescription and over-the-counter skin, hair and sexual health products for sale, costing about $15 to $100 a month. (Hers, like Hims, does not accept health insurance for prescription medications, so all costs are out-of-pocket.) Hair products include a minoxidil (brand name: Rogaine) cream made for women and shampoo made to fight hair loss. Skin care will include prescription topical creams for acne, antiaging and melasma.

Hers will also offer patients the top ten most prescribed types of generic birth control pills, like Junel, Tri-Lo Sprintec and Vienna. Patients can get a prescription through Hers, and a monthly supply will cost $30.

Why pay $30 per month when the Affordable Care Act makes generic birth control free with health insurance? Coles says Hers is trying to “put the power back into women’s hands” and address gaps in access, where some women may find it difficult to take off work for a doctor’s appointment to get a prescription or may not want birth control pills to show up on her family’s health insurance records.

“I think it's fabulous,” says Dr. Caryn Ruth Dutton, medical director of the gynecology practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, of prescribing and selling birth control pills via telemedicine. “Unfortunately the medical system creates so many barriers for women seeking contraception.” Dutton added that she would actually prefer if birth control pills were available over-the-counter. As for potential side effects like blood clots, Dutton says data has shown that women are fairly good at determining on their own if they are at risk for those.

Hers also plans to sell Addyi, also known as flibanserin. Approved by the FDA in 2015 to treat a condition known as hyposexual desire disorder, or HSDD, characterized by a lack of sexual desire that causes a woman distress.

Often erroneously referred to as the “female Viagra” (Hers makes sure to dispel this inaccuracy in its promotional materials), rather than targeting blood flow like Viagra does for men, Addyi targets a woman’s brain and is supposed to increase her desire for sex.

Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a physician and the director of PharmedOut, a Georgetown University medical center project that focuses on the effects of pharmaceutical marketing on prescribing practices, wrote in an email to Forbesthat Addyi is “both useless and dangerous.” It can cause drops in blood pressure and loss of consciousness, she says; its FDA label warns patients not to drink any alcohol while using the drug. “It is also either ineffective or marginally effective even for the made-up condition for which it was approved,” Fugh-Berman writes.

"Dr. Fugh-Berman’s statement of opinion is unsupported by medical research, scientifically inaccurate, and at direct odds with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, our nation’s highest scientific and regulatory body, that approved Addyi based on its well characterized safety and efficacy profile,” said Dr. Leah Millheiser, the chief medical officer at Addyi maker Sprout Pharmaceuticals, in a statement after publication.

“When people ask me, is it clinically meaningful? I say, you know, just ask any of my patients,” says Millheiser, who is also a practicing gynecologist. “My experience with Addyi is that it has such a profound effect on not just the relationship but all aspects of her life.”

Hers says that their medical advisory team has determined that Addyi is effective in reducing distress and improving sexual satisfaction and that it is important for women to have an option for increasing sex drive. “When we looked at the market, there were 26 options for men to be able to increase their sex drive,” says Coles. “This was the first and only FDA-approved option.”

This was updated to include additional comment from Sprout's CMO.

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Reporting on the business of healthcare and medicine, with earlier stints on the Forbes wealth team and editing the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe lists. Pre-Forbes I interned at the Culture desk of The New York Times. Email me at mtindera@forbes.com and follow me on twitter @mt...